


Please

by anonymous_John_H_Watson



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M, M/M, POV John Watson, Professor John Watson, Student Sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:41:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25378579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymous_John_H_Watson/pseuds/anonymous_John_H_Watson
Summary: Well, I ship Johnlock. Hard. So, you can imagine.
Relationships: Mary Morstan/John Watson, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 3
Kudos: 6





	Please

**Author's Note:**

> I'll put warnings at the beginning of every chapter. This one mentions war but it's not really triggering (I think). Mentions addiction too but again its not a character going through it, it's only used as a metaphor.

2010

How do you put it into words? Something like that? Ask an addict to explain why he injects shit in his veins and he'll stumble over his words like I do. Ask a fool to explain why he continues to make love with lustful eyes to the person who hurts him most and he'll be as flustered as I am. Ask a married man why he's still married even though he loves another. He'll get confused and panic. Ask me. I'm confused and panicking.

How do you put it into words? Something like that? Mary, I love you but I just love him more? Sherlock, I know you don't think of me like that but I want you? Rosie, honey, remember that boy, Tommy, who had two mommies? Well, you might have two daddies- actually scratch that, Sherlock would never want to be called daddy. Wait- what am I saying?? Sherlock will never want to be with me! More importantly, John, you have a wife remember! Right.

Obviously, this is hard to explain. I suppose I shouldn't compare it to drugs and lust because this- this is something different. But Sherlock, he- he is like a drug: strong, passionate, bloody fantastic with a chock full of side effects. He's something you want more and more and when he's gone, your body feels stiff, you leg hurts; your happiness seems to fade away in this never ending abyss and you're falling but the problem isn't that it feels like you're never going to stop falling it's this fear that you will stop falling. It's this fear that you will move on. It's the fear that you'll learn to live without him, again or at least you'll fool yourself. You won't exactly live without him you'll just not die without him. You'll just survive. Not live. There's a difference. 

Not to mention how it feels to be around him. This sudden rush of blood as something shifts in your stomach; nostalgia washes over you as you recall the first time you saw someone worth getting butterflies over. You haven't felt this way since you were thirteen: in love, confused, full of ambition and hormones with no direction except now you have a direction. You feel your brain get pumped with endorphins and you fight the urge to crack a smile because you know he's watching you. Your pupils dilate as he stares into you, through you, reads you. You know he knows. When you give him a cuppa, he pauses, if only for a moment, holds your wrist and takes your pulse. He'll pretend his hand was lingering there for no reason or he'll make an incoherent gesture. Plus, you have a sneaking suspicion that these cases he's been taking lately aren't because they're interesting but because he needs a reason to keep you around. He needs a reason to call you. You watch as he "slips" of the stairs and injures himself. You nod as he asks you to stay for the day to help him of course. To bandage him. You smile as he suggest you stay the night-just to be on the safe side of course, can't risk an injury on such an important case. But He? Slips? Please like he didn't deduce the crap out of the stairs and the frigging likelihood of slipping. But you don't care because you want to be around him too.

Still though, even after all this, how do you explain it? Maybe he feels the same way or you're making it all up in your head out of hope. Maybe it'll work out. Maybe you can talk to your wife. She'll understand. Maybe you can talk to your kid. She'll understand. Maybe you can tell the world. Who cares what they think anyway? All that's fine but how do you explain it to the man you feel it all for? How do explain it to yourself when you know no words will do what you feel justice? How do you tell someone you think you've fallen for them? Fallen for them so hard that you're scared?

Sherlock, if you're reading this, I love you.  
-John

2004

"Frost, Wordsworth, Shelly.." he began.  
He had caught the attention of the class the way only a man of experience knows how. He was past the stuttering and stumbling awkwardness and over awareness of a substitute teacher, past the passion of a young "hot" professor, past the over ambition of a 25 year old, fresh from college, past feeling like a failure for teaching. He had held on to the best parts. The passion and ambition and everything, just less of it. Less of all of it, all of him.

"There all just names really, like yours or- or even mine." He chuckled.  
Maintaining silence for a second, perhaps on purpose, he continued,  
"Watson. It doesn't mean anything. Or it doesn't right now anyway."

His eyes wandered away a bit, his mind went with them. His name did mean something a few years ago.  
"Anyway, what is truly ironic about these blokes is the fact that whatever they did was not to make a name, all of what they did had a different reason e-entirely. You see, all of them, they all- they all just had this- this love for poetry. And I-I reckon you should um, leave this class if you lack it." 

His voice drowned out.  
It's weird how quickly he changed. From this to that.  
"What we'll be studying is not poems about love or romance, not about ambition and greed and hate but war. War is- its different, it just is. You'll notice that not many write of the horrors of war but the little things. They-they talk about how they think their dog tag feels cold on their chest and how they burned their tea and how their- how their clothes- don't, don't smell like their mother's detergent anymore."  
It didn't matter that he had given this lecture before or that he had rehearsed it. Bloody hell.  
"Uhh.."  
Silence. Whispers.  
"Class dismissed. Don't- don't touch your books just write me a poem about something. Anything. I'll see you next week." 

He sank in his chair. His tea had gone cold now.  
"Professor, I've actually-"  
"Sorry, what?"  
"I've already written something, it's not a poem exactly but-"  
"Ok, just leave it, uh-"  
"Mary, Sir."  
"Right."  
He looked up. She was pretty. Fu*k.

Immediately looking down at the paper, he pretended to scan it; she walked away, slowly at first and faster all at once. Her could hear her, her shoes hitting the floor tahk- tahk- tahk- tahk it sounded like the sound of guns, merciless Volvos and Widowmakers, he could practically feel his body shake from the recoil, tahk-tahk-tahk. God, why was it so hot? Why? Why?

The door closed. And she was gone.

The poem read,  
"It's the colour of his tears,  
The colour of his shirt that you wear in the morning after,  
The colour of his aftershave's scent that clings to you,  
The colour of his tie that you place around his neck,  
The colour you feel when he leaves,  
The colour of the weather when he drapes a blanket over you,  
The colour of his suit when he holds you and calms you down,  
The colour of his breath when he kisses you in the rain,

It is not the colour you feel when you make love in the night,  
It is not the colour you feel when you kiss him,  
It is not the colour you feel when you tell him you love him. 

But it is the colour you see, feel, hear and become when he is gone."

Blind.  
That's what it was called. 

There was no structure, no set rhyme scheme. It wasn't a tanka or haiku. Maybe blank verse. There was no flow to it. But the art was there, she was there. 

Okay, she's a student, John.

"Ah, great- a teacher, at last. Tell me, are you all a bunch of daft idiots or is at least one of you even a bit qualified or competent to know more, if not the same amount as a ten year old textbook that I could have gotten at a horribly funded, public library? Don't answer. I swear the lot of you bring down the IQ of the whole college when you open your mouths."

What.  
__________

"Uhmm, do excuse me but you can't just be walking around these halls and talking to your teachers like that! What the hell do you think you're doing? Who are you?" John asked.  
Arrogant, cocky bastard of a student,  
he added in his head.  
"Oh, please, don't go all military on me."  
"What? How did yo- WHAT. IS. YOUR. NAME."  
"Oh, like it isn't obvious. Every part of you practically screams it. It must be sad inside that pathetically slow brain of yours."  
"Listen," John began but was immediately interrupted. 

The boy took increasingly long strides towards John, decreasing the distance exponentially between them until they were sheer inches apart.  
"You're tan. I can see from here that your neck isn't or anything further down because you weren't at a tanning salon, were you? No. You did it for a job. Look at the way you're standing, you don't need that sorry walking stick, you're not a cripple-"  
He arched his neck to see the words  
Dr.John Watson  
scrilbbled on the black board in chalk.  
"No, you're a war hero, John. And that leg it isn't an injury, its psychosomatic. You're younger than you look, that shoulder has aged you. And you flinched, didn't you, when I came to you so fast, so close. You haven't been touched by someone in a while. Your eyes shout of your nightmares."  
Sherlock's eyes widened and he took a few steps back.  
"OH YES, oh yes." He chuckled.  
He seemed amused or pleased, at the least, by his own genius.  
"Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, no? Soldier. Afganistan or Iran? Too easy, too easy, a veteran teaching poetry about war. How orginal. Pension not enough for you, then."

John stood, his mouth ajar. He didn't interrupt him, not once. Was it that obvious? No, it wasn't, it couldn't be. Only he could see it.  
"Who- who? That was um, quite impressive."  
"What?" The boy blurted.  
He looked as if he just saw pigs fly..through ghosts..on Mars.  
He looked far more shocked than John.  
"That was uhm, bloody fantastic actually." John grinned ear to ear.  
"How?" He chucked. "Maybe I, I'm sorry but that was," he smiled again, his eyes sparkling.  
The boy blushed. "Oh, it's nothing, really, I just. I just see things, I suppose, that other people overlook. Remove the impossible and all that is left, no matter how improbable is true. I don't know."  
"Well, I'd like to. I do hope you're taking my class or on second thought, I don't- I don't want you reading my thoughts," he paused, "Well, not all the time anyway." He added.  
"Your class? Oh yes, I am taking it."  
No, He wasn't. But he would sign up immediately.  
"I'm afraid that is why you had to witness my outburst of sorts, so to say. I seem to have gotten incorrect directions,"  
No, he didn't.  
"From the janitor." He added.  
The school janitor worked at night. And its 11am in the morning right now, tall boy.  
"And so I got late. It made me mad."  
"Oh, I see." John replied.  
"Yes."  
"Well, that's okay, next class then. I'll just send you what you missed. What's your name then?"  
"Its Sherlock Holmes and the dorm is 221b Baker House."  
"Oh, I don't actually need to know your dorm. I'll just email the work."  
"Oh, right. Its 221bbakerhouse@gmail.com."  
"Right." He chuckled.  
"Right.  
___________

Ch.2 coming soon


End file.
